Scotland’s national poet Robert Burns spent some time in Edinburgh, where he met Agnes (Nancy) McLehose. This meeting sparked a secret love affair, Sylvander & Clarinda, a Scottish love story that inspired the writing of Ae Fond Kiss.
Robert Burns in Edinburgh
Robert (Rabbie) Burns first rides into Edinburgh from Ayrshire on a borrowed horse in late November 1786. He spends about 6 months in search of a publisher for the second edition of his collection of poems. The first edition was published in July that same year. At this point, he is becoming well-known as the ‘ploughman poet’ and looking to make some notable connections.
But who is Agnes?
Originally from Glasgow, Agnes (Nancy) McLehose came to Edinburgh in 1782 following the death of her father. She’s separated from her husband James who has relocated with their 3 children to Jamaica to make money in slavery. Poor Agnes has not been lucky in love. Her husband had once been so keen to win her heart that he was quite obsessed. On one occasion he had booked all other seats on a 10-hour coach journey from Glasgow to Edinburgh just to be alone with her. At first glance, this may seem a dramatically romantic gesture but his ardour turned into controlling mental abuse.
Agnes in Edinburgh
Agnes lives in a flat in General’s Entry off Potterow. She is a poet, 29 years old, and eager to meet the latest young poet on the scene, Robert Burns. She is religious, intelligent, educated, and classy.
Sylvander and Clarinda meet
Burns arrives in Edinburgh for a second time in October 1787, returning from a literary tour after the launch of his second edition of poems in April that year.
He meets Agnes for the first time, on 4 December 1787 at a tea-party on the first floor of an old tenement in Alison Square, near to her flat in General’s Entry. She immediately writes a note to Rabbie inviting him to her home for tea. Unfortunately, Burns has a fall, dislocates his knee and can’t walk. A few days later Rabbie replies in a note:
“I can say with truth, Madam, that I never met with a person in my life whom I more anxiously wished to meet again than yourself… I know not how to account for it. I am strangely taken with some people; nor am I often mistaken, You are a stranger to me; but I am an odd being: some yet unnamed feelings; things, not principles, but better than whims, carry me farther than boasted reason ever did a Philosopher.”
from ‘Sylvander and Clarinda, The Love Letters of Robert Burns and Agnes M’Lehose’
Agnes replies:
“I perfectly comprehend…. Perhaps instinct comes nearer their description than either “Principles” or “Whims”. Think ye they have any connection with that ‘heavenly light which leads astray’? One thing I know, that they have a powerful effect on me, and are delightful when under the check of reason and religion…. Pardon any little freedoms I take with you.”
FROM ‘SYLVANDER AND CLARINDA, THE LOVE LETTERS OF ROBERT BURNS AND AGNES M’LEHOSE’
love letters
It was common practice for sweethearts to pass love notes to each other in the 18th Century. In the days before the penny post, notes could be passed quickly in Edinburgh through caddies – young boys acting as couriers for tips, delivering notes or bringing replies to notes.
And there it begins…a love affair, literary, pure and platonic, conducted almost entirely through many letters from then on. Burns agrees to Agnes’s suggestion of using the poetic-utopian Arcadian names of ‘Sylvander’ and ‘Clarinda’. Rabbie, as ever, was keen to consummate the relationship but her wisdom, religious caution and fear of moral judgement kept her resistant to him.
Nancy writes a verse referencing her estranged husband:
“Talk not of Love, it gives me pain,
For Love has been my foe;
He bound me with an iron chain.
And plunged me deep in woe….
Your Friendship much can make me blest,
O, why that bliss destroy!
Why urge the odious, one request
You know I must deny!”
It is no surprise that Agnes may have fallen for the charms of Rabbie, with his soulful eyes and poet’s heart. But Rabbie had a lustful spirit and quite the reputation, already getting two women pregnant, one of them his wife-to-be Jean Armour. Rabbie was also of a lower class and any relationship between them would have been frowned upon, to say the least.
Ae fond kiss and then we sever…
In January 1791 Agnes leaves Edinburgh under pressure from her family to attempt a reconciliation with her husband in Jamaica. Before she sets sail, she urges Rabbie to return to Jean Armour. Agnes returns to Edinburgh immediately on discovering her husband’s treatment of slaves.
Whilst in Edinburgh, Burns realises he may not make a decent living as a poet and joins the Excise on the Solway coast, settling in Dumfries with Jean Armour. He accepts an offer from publisher William Creech to buy the copyright of his poems for 100 guineas which allows his poems to be widely republished and reprinted in Ireland and the USA. On 6 December 1791 Rabbie and Agnes meet in Edinburgh for the very last time. Robert Burns writes Ae Fond Kiss with her in mind and sends her the manuscript. That manuscript is now held by the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh.
In 1810 Agnes moves to 14 Calton Hill, Edinburgh where, in 1825, Burns’s fourth son, Captain James Glencairn Burns, visits her. Agnes dies on 23 October 1841 and is buried at Canongate Kirkyard, Edinburgh.
On 6th December 1831, Nancy wrote in her journal:
“This day I can never forget. Parted with Burns, in the year 1791, never more to meet in this world. Oh, may we meet in Heaven!”
